© 2024
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson!

This week, we celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 183rd birthday.  What better way to celebrate the poet than by baking her famous Black Cake?   A group of Charlottesville poets-turned-bakers let us join them for their “Fourth Annual Emily Dickinson Birthday Party.”

Emily Dickinson was not only a prolific poet, but she was also a very industrious baker.  A few years ago, cultural historian Addeane Kelley came across a newspaper article that had a recipe for Emily’s “Black Cake”.

Credit Wikimedia Commons
Digitally restored daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson, 1847

Now. every year for Emily’s birthday, Addeane and a few friends gather at the home of Diane Ober and John Alexander to make copious amounts of this brandy-soaked fruit cake.  
 

Related Content
  • As you plan this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, you might want to consider what the Pilgrims really ate. At Washington & Lee University, students got a taste…